Video Analytics ROI | 3 Video Metrics To Measure Videos Success

Today businesses are investing more than ever in producing great video content that is designed to attract, engage, and convert audiences. If you are one such business and have been incorporating videos, and you know about its importance, hats off to you.

On the flip side, how do you measure your videos’ performance? Is your video content resonating with your audience? With the demand for video content on the rise, you can’t skim out on knowing about the importance of metrics and its role in helping you achieve your preset goals.

So keep reading to learn more.

How important are metrics when it comes to video?

Picture this:

A sales rep gets pulled into a team call and is asked which of his videos have been the most effective in driving leads – how would he answer?

The obvious step is he should arm himself with a list of metrics, which will give him a clear picture of the performance of various videos and the ROI (return on investment) it generated – this is why metrics are becoming increasingly important for today’s marketers.

Understanding the basics of metrics

Measuring the performance of a video using metrics gives businesses the ability to improve their content offering to their audience. Just like you track the key performance indicators (KPI) for blogs, ebooks etc, you need to review your video’s engagement data to understand how well your videos are performing.

After all, you cannot optimize something you don’t measure, right? With the right metrics, you can make informed decisions to achieve desirable results.

What video goals do you aim to achieve?

A goal without a plan is just a wish – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Any video should start with an objective and an understanding of what you’re hoping to achieve. To begin with, set your video goals even before you draw your storyboard, otherwise, you’ll only be publishing videos for the sake of it.

Remember, your goals will differ from video to video based on the stages of the funnel they’re intended for. Are you looking to increase your engagement rate? Or to build your contact list?

Or perhaps you want to generate more leads? For each of these goals, the metric you use will differ from each other. We will get into it a while later.

Best practices that you should know if you have started using video in your sales efforts.

There are a couple of pointers you should consider when starting to use videos:

Who is your target audience?

When it comes to your target audience, the more specific, the better. To begin with, start looking at your buyer persona your company already has. From here, you will know what their video preferences are – what types of videos work best for them?

What type of content do they prefer to consume? Build a profile of your video audience from there.

For eg. If you’re a shoe company and one of your buyer personas is people who’re new to fitness, then a video guide on how to choose the right workout shoe would instantly grab their attention as they would consider it as a ‘useful content’.

Types of content based on the buyer stage?

To put a finger on the pulse of your audience, map the buyer’s journey for your product or service so you can identify what type of video content is best suited to help potential customers at different stages of the buying journey.

For instance, the content for a top-of-funnel video will be different from the one they’ll need when they’re in the consideration phase. A top-of-funnel lead would want to see an educational video and explainer videos, while a bottom-of-funnel lead would prefer testimonial videos and demo videos.

Every time you create a new video, ask yourself which persona the content speaks to, and at what point in the customer journey.

What type of videos can you make?

Before you dive in and start filming, you need to figure out what kinds of videos you are going to make. Think about the story you want to tell and the video type that is best suited to share that story.

When you’re first getting started, choose a few video styles and see what works, and what doesn’t. Here is an overview of the various types of video formats you can use depending on the stage of the funnel your customer is at.

Explainer videos – The early/discovery stage of the buyer’s journey.

It is a useful format for explaining complex products or services and helps increase brand awareness. With an explainer video, you are only looking to outline a problem you know your customers have, thus it is perfectly suited for the early stage buyers’.

How-To videos – Easing people from the discovery phase with a step-by-step tutorial of your product or service.

Since it is common for prospects to have various queries regarding your product, how-to videos are a great way to answer important customer questions in your industry. At the end of the video, you can also prompt them to download a piece of mid-funnel content to keep them moving through the buyer’s journey.

Webinars – For educating potential customers, generating leads to build contact lists.

Webinars are a great way to build contact lists as people register in advance to watch the session. When planning for a new webinar, think about how you are going to repurpose them – i.e convert them into bite-sized content and share on multiple channels.

What do you have to measure when trying to understand the impact of videos?

Metrics for videos tell you whether a particular topic or story has resonated with your audience. It also tells you whether your video program has been a profitable investment. Let’s explore the metrics you need to find out the audience’s behavior towards your video.

View count/video email open

The question that’s most frequently asked when you send a video is “How many people watched your video?” It’s a fair question and views are an important measurement. A high view count is an indicator of how effective your production, distribution, and marketing strategies are.

It means you did something right along the way – be it an engaging topic, a compelling video title, or maybe an attractive video thumbnail. A word of caution: welling only on the view count is misleading.

While virality can feel awesome, unless you pair it with a more meaningful metric such as video engagement rate, it will be only a vanity metric.

Engagement /watch rate

When you look at view numbers, you will only know how many people clicked your video and started watching and that’s not enough. In addition to this, you should also know how much of your videos viewers watch. This video insight will tell you whether it resonated or if they abandoned your video midway.

So how do you find the engagement rate for your video? For this, firstly, separate your video into segments (but how do you segment your video?) and then use the formula below:

The number of people watching your video at each segment/number of people who started watching your video.

If you have 100 segments and 1000 people started watching, and 700 are still watching after a minute, your engagement rate for that segment is 70%.

Broadly, if at least 60% of viewers watch the whole video, you can consider your video a success. But if your finish rate is significantly lower, read further to know how you can rectify it.

Click-through rate (CTR)

When your prospects see an interactive element in your videos such as CTA’s or lead generation forms, do they click on it? If they do, it indicates your video title, call-to-action (CTA), and thumbnail are enticing them to click on the play button. So how do you calculate the click-through rate, also known as the play rate?

Video click-through rate = The number of views/number of people who clicked on the video.

So what does your CTR say about your videos? Are they intriguing enough?

The types of metrics vs their goals

As mentioned earlier in the blog, every business must have preset goals for their videos. And let’s be honest, the goals you set will differ from video to video based on the stage of the funnel they’re intended for. So how would you determine if you have achieved those goals?

Whatever your video goals are, with the right metrics, you can evaluate your success. Below are 3 common video goals and the metrics required to help you determine their efficacy.

Lead generation

Required metric: Subscription rate

Need to build a contact list for your sales pipeline? Use lead forms within your video when prospects are most engaged to collect their email or other contact information.

With these details, your sales team can send them content related to the video topics they watch and will know exactly how to help them. Eg. If a prospect has watched one of your case study videos, you can follow it up with a product overview video the next day.

Lead qualification

Required metric: View duration, engagement rate, and audience insights.

If your goal is to attract viewers to your videos, you need to start learning more about who they are and the video content they’re interested in. For this, use pop-up forms requesting prospects to download useful resources such as blogs, case studies, etc. This will help you create your buyer’s persona based on the details you’d derive.

Conversion – generate opportunities

Required metric: Click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and return on investment (ROI).

Conversion rate can be the most important and insightful metric as it measures your viewer’s action – i.e how well your videos persuade viewers to convert into a lead.

If you have set a specific goal and included a call-to-action (CTA) in your video planning, your conversion rate will let you know if the video is meeting those goals. If they do, this indicates your viewers are positively reacting to your videos and you are on the right track with videos.

But what if your metrics aren’t meeting your desired goals?

What is the reason for low metrics?

If you’re new to videos, video metrics can sometimes be confusing or overwhelming. As much as you expect success from each of your videos, the reality is that some videos may surprise you with low metrics. But fret not! We will now discuss the reasons why your metrics might be poor and what you can do to improve to enjoy greater success.

Low view count

Imagine your company released a heart-touching video, but you find your view count to be poor, or begin to drop. What would you do? Here are a few reasons you can look into:

Wrong target audience: Are you reaching out to the wrong audience? Have you created the right buyer’s persona?
Posting on the wrong platform: How is your distribution strategy? Are you posting on channels where your prospects are and are likely to watch?
Interesting titles and thumbnails: Are you using interesting titles and thumbnails?

To improve your view count, you can:

Start by looking at the buyers and build a user persona to help you determine the people you’re trying to connect with. Include anything pertinent to your persona – such as how they prefer to learn, what kind of content will they consume, and more.
Find out which platform your target audience is using and post your videos there.
Research on the keywords or tags, and use those when uploading a video, or else it may affect the discoverability of a video and reduce views.

Low engagement rate

Are viewers only watching a couple of seconds of your video, and skipping certain parts? Here are few pointers shedding light on what could have gone wrong:

Unwanted content: If you find your viewers skipping over certain parts of the video, evaluate if your video content is boring and dragging.
Lengthy video: Do you find viewers dropping off at the same point in your video? Chances are, your video is lengthy and taking too much time off your viewers.
Catering to the wrong audience: Is your video content resonating with the audience or are they abandoning it?

For a better engagement rate, you can:

Place more emphasis on what’s useful and cut out certain parts of the video you think aren’t resonating with your viewers.
Segment your videos based on the stage of the funnel your audiences are at. In the below example, you can see Salesforce (previously known as ExactTarget) has segmented their videos based on the stages of the funnel the buyers are at.

Review your video title to make sure it accurately reflects your video content. Sometimes your subject line may not align with your video content, making them abandon your video.
Cross-check if the type of video content is apt for the stage of the funnel they are in. For example, An early-stage prospect will not want to see a demo video, whereas later stage prospects want to know cost and implementations. Therefore, make sure your target audience is on point.

Low click-through rate

If you find your viewers aren’t taking the desired action after viewing your video – whether it is to fill in a contact form, watch more videos, sign up for a free trial or make a purchase – you need to consider the following issues and rectify them:

Irrelevant CTA: Is your CTA generic? Is it in line with the video content and the stage of the funnel your prospect is at?
Placement of the CTA: Is your CTA at the beginning of the video or the end of the video?
Unattractive CTA button: Is your CTA button fitting in with the tone and look of your video?

Here’s what you can do:

Create a CTA that is relevant to your video content to increase conversions.
Place your CTA mid-way of the video so that people who skip the end will still be more likely to take an action than someone who just clicked play. In the below video by Salesforce, you can see they’ve included their CTA towards the middle promoting viewers to download their report.
Make your CTA visually appealing and in-line with your overall tone and look without excessive text and graphics.

Now that we’ve looked into the various video metrics a business should use, and the steps to improve low metrics, let’s see the reports Hippo Video offers so you can track your video’s performance all in one platform.

Various reports offered by Hippo Video to track your video analytics

Every business must pay attention to analytics as it is a key component in any successful video selling strategy. This is why Hippo Video gives you access to all the video insights required to track the performance of your videos and the return on investment (ROI) it has generated.

A list of the various video reports Hippo Video offers you:

Overall report
Demographic report
Shared video report
Reactions report
Timeline actions report

Let’s go to the detailed explanation of each report we offer:

Overall Report

In the overall report, you can see how many people have watched and shared your video. You can also find the number of viewers who watched your videos until the end.

Demographic Report

In the demographic report, you can see the locations of your video being visited and get a detailed view of the location. Double click on an area to zoom. If you click on the location pin, you get the number of people who played your video from that particular location. Hippo Video also provides an overview of the sources that send traffic to your Website, such as direct traffic, referrals, email, social media, etc.

Shared Video Report

Get the complete video performance report on the platform where your video is shared(e.g., Facebook, Twitter, direct link, embed code). You can also see how your video is performing, based on the number of times your video is played and its unique users.

In this report, you can see the,

Unique Plays: Number of users who watched your video.
Total Plays: Number of times a video is played, including the rewatch video count.

You can filter the report based on weekly and monthly performance, and you can also download the report (top right corner) in .csv and .xls formats to your local drive.

Reactions Report

In the reaction report, we provide the most relevant data for interactions such as reactions, likes, and dislikes. Also, you will know how many viewers have reacted to your video at a specific time. The image below displays the count of each reaction given by your audience.

Timeline actions Report

In the timeline actions report, we provide the total count of users, annotations, lead generation, custom poll, promote playlist, and CTA along with the user details such as IP and location.

Why choose online hosting over social media platforms?

Now you might ask a question – “Why can’t I simply use social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms instead of a video hosting platform like Hippo Video?” Sure, uploading videos to third-party platforms like YouTube is free and people are accustomed to going on YouTube for video content.

However, even though YouTube and other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook provide good analytics, it is limited when compared with those offered by a video hosting platform.

It is important to note that each platform has its way to measure the view count. On Youtube, for example, a video has to be watched for at least 30 seconds to be counted as “viewed” – this is not the case with a video hosting platform as every activity is timely recorded.
On Facebook, if a video resonates well with part of your audience, then the platform concludes that it’ll resonate with the rest of your audience. But in the case of a video hosting platform, you can personalize the reach of your videos based on your buyer’s persona and the stage of the funnel they are in.
On video hosting platforms, you can integrate with your existing business automation and management systems. This will help you integrate your email marketing automation system and create drip campaigns with video content directed at a specific audience at the right time.

Conclusion

Many businesses struggle to go beyond the most basic metrics to measure their videos’ performance. But doing so will only imply that you are investing in videos without a real understanding of whether you’re getting any results in return.

Using these above-mentioned metrics means you don’t have to use guesswork, as it helps you maximize your video’s effectiveness and support your goals. Don’t focus on just one metric, rather, take each into account and continue to run tests to see how and where you can improve. Use your findings to learn, and better your future videos.